216 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



among barbarous tribes and which were carried on by peoples of 

 the cultural level of the Children of Israel and occasionally by 

 those more advanced may have had a eugenic effect. Leading as 

 they did to the supplanting of the conquered by their conquerors 

 their general result must have been a gradual replacement of less 

 efficient by more efficient peoples. But in modern warfare the 

 vanquished are not exterminated. They are usually not dispos- 

 sessed of their territory and after peace is declared they may 

 multiply more rapidly than their conquerors. Our own Civil 

 War certainly led to no desirable results from the viewpoint of 

 group selection. Both sides lost much of their best blood, and it 

 cannot be said that either side was the superior of the other in 

 hereditary qualities. Between wars such as this and the en- 

 counters of groups of primitive man there may be very varied 

 kinds of biological effect depending on the varied methods of 

 waging war, the character of the contestants and the nature of the 

 final settlement of the conflict. Wars between the higher and 

 lower races, such for instance as those which led to the replace- 

 ment of the aborigines by the Anglo-Saxon are doubtless produc- 

 tive of racial advance. The great extension of this enterprising 

 people owes much to a series of successful wars against the less 

 favored peoples who were found to be in the way. It cannot be 

 denied that wars between subdivisions of the white race may have 

 resulted in racial improvement, but it would be unsafe to claim 

 this for most of them. Theoretically it is easy to justify war 

 among modern peoples by saying that it is the best endowed 

 group which is most apt to prevail, and therefore the best condi- 

 tion for racial advancement is afforded by giving free play to 

 group selection. This is the favorite standpoint of those who 

 would justify war on biological grounds. As Steinmetz has 

 pointed out in his able Philosophic des Krieges, modem wars, 

 while they do not directly lead to extermination may leave a 

 people so crippled, devoid of energy, spirit and enterprise that its 

 life tends to stagnate and its population eventually decreases. 

 Headley remarks in his Problems of Evolution "Though it can 

 never happen that any of the European nations, even in the 



